‘And that,’ said Spicer with a sympathetic smile, ‘is why we don’t like students to know too much about their cadavers.’
‘Now I get it,’ she said, wishing fervently that she didn’t.
‘Anyway,’ Spicer added, ‘it’s not all doom and gloom. On Friday night we’ll all have a bit of a get-together at my place to mark the end of dissection. Sort of a wake.’
‘I’m up for that,’ said Rob, and Dilip nodded vigorously.
‘Partay,’ said Scott in the fake American accent he thought made him cooler.
Meg nodded but she didn’t feel like a partay. Half of her was relieved that taking photos of Bill’s throat was now out of the question – she had no idea which bag held his body, or even whether his body was still there. But the other half of her knew it meant that she could no longer hold Patrick to his part of the bargain.
And the thought of reading Ulysses or Moby Dick while Mrs Deal’s restless finger marked erratic time made her feel queasy.
43
PATRICK’S DAY STARTED badly when he received a Valentine’s card. On the front was a photo of a heart made of seashells pressed into damp sand. Inside was nothing but a question mark. It confused him to the point where he had to seek clarification from Kim, who seemed disproportionately excited.
‘Jackson!’ she yelled up the stairs, ‘Patrick’s got a Valentine’s card!’
Once he knew what it was, Patrick hated everything about it – the anonymity, the concept and, most of all, the surprise. Patrick liked to be able to prepare; the unexpected was a threat and changes were bad. If he survived them, it was only because he’d taken the precaution of surrounding himself with enough that was unchanged to see him through the transition. His bicycle. His sleeping bag. His book of names. These were some of the constants that allowed him – with enough preparation and planning – to pick his way through the minefield of life. His mother’s drinking, the death of his father, the move to university. These had been survivable only because of his photos of death and his alphabet plate.
So the unexpected appearance of the card filled Patrick with foreboding about the day ahead.
The doorbell rang. It was Meg.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Patrick.
‘Nothing!’ she said. ‘Well, something, but not… y’know. Nothing terrible. Can I come in?’
While Patrick was thinking about it, Jackson shouldered his way past them both, winding his scarf around his neck and glaring at Patrick.
‘Fucking Valentine’s cards,’ he hissed.
‘What’s wrong with Valentine’s cards?’ said Meg cautiously.
‘Everything,’ said Patrick, and allowed Meg to follow him into the kitchen, where she told him the bodies had gone.
Patrick reeled. Despite all his precautions, life had blown up in his face.
‘Dissection is a twenty-two-week course!’ he shouted.
‘I know,’ said Meg.
‘But we’ve only had twenty-one!’
‘Sssh,’ she said soothingly. ‘I suppose that they consider a recap week using prosections to be a valid part of the course.’
‘But it’s not,’ said Patrick vehemently. Prosections were the chunks of abdomen, the slivers of brain, the disembodied hands. Reeking and grey with age, they were lifted, dripping with preservative, from the big white buckets in the second of the refrigerated rooms, to demonstrate what students should be looking for in the less obvious cadavers. Kidneys with renal vessels trailing like shoelaces, faces sliced like toast on a rack.
‘You have to find Number 19,’ said Patrick firmly. ‘We made a deal.’
‘Patrick, how can I? I can’t march over to the body bags in the middle of class and unzip them all until I find him. And then take photos.’
‘But we made a deal.’
‘The deal’s off. I’m sorry. Really sorry.’
Patrick looked lost. ‘How will we get the proof now?’
‘I’m not sure we can,’ sighed Meg.
Patrick turned away from her and stared broodingly at the kitchen tap. He could see Meg reflected in the stainless steel, looking at the back of his head. He realized that it was easier to look at her this way – without having to face her. For the first time he studied her without having to avoid catching her eye. The reflection was slightly distorted, but it made him remember his mother’s question at Christmas.
Is she pretty?
Meg had dark eyebrows over brown eyes, pale skin and a curved mouth. He didn’t know if she was pretty because that was not something he’d ever registered in anyone in the fleeting glances that were all he could manage. But her face was even, and calming to look at, even in a tap.
For the first time in his life he wondered what she saw when she looked at him. The curved steel tap stretched his face to a narrow strip, his eyes bugging out at the top like an alien stick insect. He closed them and refocused on the struggle to connect the dots of events and motivations.
The body was no longer available. But the peanut hadn’t been with the body. Therefore the peanut was still there to be found. Somewhere. It wasn’t much, but it would be better than nothing, which was what they had now.
He opened his eyes and glanced at Meg’s shoulder. ‘Where does Scott live?’ he demanded.
‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘He could have taken the peanut.’
‘Why would he have taken it?’
Patrick didn’t know the answer to that. He was desperate – that was all. At least Scott had threatened to kill him, and had tried to uncover the eyes of the corpse. If it wasn’t Scott, he was lost again.
‘I think you’re clutching at straws,’ said Meg.
‘I want to speak to him,’ he said stubbornly.
‘Really?’ She sighed.
‘Yes,’ said Patrick. ‘Really.’
‘In that case,’ said Meg with a wry little smile, ‘tomorrow night we par-tay.’
It was the second Thursday. Sarah hadn’t even noticed the first one after she’d received Professor Madoc’s letter; that week had passed in a liquid blur of calling in sick to the card shop, and the smell of her own unwashed sheets.
But this was the second Thursday, and now she sat by the phone all evening, with the cat on her lap, watching the local news. Every bulletin that passed without word of a young man hanged or drowned or found on the railway tracks allowed her to uncap the Vladivar and drink to the fact that Patrick was probably still alive.
Or that he hadn’t come home yet; she wasn’t sure which.
The thought of his return filled her with a slow panic. So much so that she had not called Professor Madoc or the Cardiff police to enquire as to where Patrick might be now that he’d been expelled. Nor had she driven the forty-odd miles to Cardiff and knocked on the door of the little terraced house where she had left him last September.
Not even when she was sober.
There was no reason for her to worry. She had paid Patrick’s rent until the end of the spring term, and he had twenty pounds a week to live on. It wasn’t much, but it was all she’d been able to afford without making applications and supplications, and coming to the attention of who knew what authorities? Easier just to tighten their belts. Luckily Patrick didn’t really care about clothing or food – or how little there was of either.
Sarah Fort eyed the phone warily. It was already gone eleven. It was unlikely to ring now.